


Fangs

by kumulonimbus



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Blood and Gore, Family, Family Drama, Gen, Horror, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-07 04:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumulonimbus/pseuds/kumulonimbus
Summary: The tiny lord has fangs, and tonight he is his own thirst. Tonight, he becomes his hunger. And the gravestones have never looked as monumental as they do tonight; the moon has never looked so magnificently out of reach, the night has never felt this everlasting and the trees, in the distance, have never looked so white.





	Fangs

**Author's Note:**

> Little Halloween one-shot. First time writing for the Castlevania fandom =)

_“The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.”_  
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber.

The small girl was worried about her mother. Her father had tried almost anything, but the woman’s condition was getting worse and worse with each passing day. Desperate, the child ran away from home one night, chasing after the countless rumors she had heard oh so many times: there was a woman in town that knew all about _medicine_.

Her neighbors had told her not to trust her, though. They claimed she was a witch; they said her hands were only used to serve the powerful might of the darkness that encompasses everything that’s corrupted. But the child didn’t care, she couldn’t afford to listen to all the lascivious tongues that knew little about warning but too much about alarming. Her mother’s life was on the line and, perhaps, shaking hands with the devil in order to save her was not such a bad idea after all.

She ran through the deserted streets as midnight closed around her small body until she nearly ran out of breath. She wasn’t exactly sure what this revolutionary _medicine_ could do for her dying mother, but she was willing to try to understand what a pragmatic mind could do for others – even if that pragmatic mind was allegedly tainted by malicious voices and corrupted spirits.

She knocked on the door and waited patiently until a beautiful woman came to greet her. In her eyes, the child could see the candor that only a mother’s warm stare can offer.

The woman’s name was Lisa, and her name resounded all around the girl as every book welcomed her into the large room. She had heard about this woman before; she had listened to every story they had told her about her – yet those eyes, so full of concern and comprehension, were far from those of an evil witch.

Still agitated, the small girl told Lisa about her dying mother. She even begged the woman for help. As she cried out, the woman held her in her arms, enveloping the desperate plea of someone who’s about to lose the one they love the most. With remarkable patience, Lisa asked the girl about the symptoms her mother had been exhibiting and swam through the cascade of tears adorning the child’s face. With the innocence of a fresh soul, the girl described her mother’s condition – an endangered pregnancy that could potentially destroy both lives.

“We should go to your house,” Lisa suggested. “There’s not much I can do from here; I need to see her,”

The girl shook her head in silent desperation. She had heard all the stories. She could not be seen with that woman.

With a heavy heart, Lisa understood the girl’s cruel predicament. She herself had also heard the stories and, as absurd as they were, she could not afford to compromise the child’s integrity. Lowering her head as a sign of peaceful acceptance, the woman patted the girl’s shoulder and told her to wait for her – even if she could not see the child’s mother, her medicine could still try to help the woman. The girl nodded her head in silence and waited for Lisa to return, but as minutes went by, a shadow moving slowly near the door caught her attention.

Frightened by the sudden appearance yet ready to muster all her innocent courage, the girl stood in place and balled her hands into tight fists that fell at the sides of her body.

“Show yourself,” she demanded. “I am not afraid of you.”

A witch’s house was supposed to be haunted, after all. Ghosts, demons and even dark specters were supposed to infest the place with their tenebrous essence. Terrified, the girl produced a wooden cross from her pocket and held onto it as if holding on for dear life but as the shadow moved closer to her, her fears faded just as easily as they had arrived.

Washed in diaphanous candlelight, a boy her age abandoned the darkness and stood before her, curiously yet shy. She had seen him before around town with his mother, once, or maybe twice, but she had never truly seen him like she was seeing him now, up close and nearly personal. Judging by the angelic features of his face, it was nearly impossible to believe he could be the witch’s son. A smile so serene and pure did not belong in the pages of a horror story. If anything, the girl was almost certain that only a white-winged angel could possess such beauty.

Yes. That’s what divine beings must look like. That’s what heaven itself must look like.

His name was Adrian, she remembered, and his sweet voice promptly agreed with her memory. The girl tried to explain why she was in his house but the boy seemed to pay no mind to her reasons: it was almost as if he was genuinely happy to have her there, with him, even if their meeting was only meant to be brief and detrimentally circumstantial.

She remembered then, as she fought hard against the sweetness of his smile: he was rarely seen outside his house. It was possible he had never spent any time with another child.

She smiled at him and the boy smiled back, but his broad grin revealed more than she expected.

_The tiny lord has fangs._

And the children are always told not to play with him.

Everyone in town knows about this: his family is not to be messed with. His father is a tormenting mystery that could swallow the light of the world in a single gulp. His mother is a conniving witch and, perhaps, the boy is the most elaborate spell she’s ever produced. Those amber eyes of his are lighthouses on fire, igniting a face that’s breathtakingly beautiful for a boy his age. He could never pass for a regular, normal boy: he’s just too beautiful, too wickedly beautiful, too dangerously beautiful for this world. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that the child’s beauty does not belong with them, it does not represent the most intrinsic characteristics of mundane human beauty. His beauty is simply out of this world and perhaps that’s the reason why he’s rarely seen outside. Such beauty needs to be protected, cultivated even, and honed as a skill created by hands that serve only evil.

_The tiny lord has fangs. _

His smile was both beautiful and rotten; his humor naive, his patience seemed tailored and contrived. His hands were urgent and nostalgically wanton, but at the same time his touch was gentle and delicate; his fingers were artists eager to craft the illusion of a deer pretending to be a lion and not the other way around.

_But he's got fangs in his mouth. _

_The second he smiles; you'll witness the beast. _

His smile frightened her but she still endured, like a helpless leaf carried by the wind. His carnivore smile terrorized her but she knew there was no use running. There was no use screaming. There was no use fearing such beauty; no-one should fear beauty. His amber eyes made it perfectly clear: he was not exactly sure what was going on. That thirst, that hunger, that ancient call trying to summon an Adrian he was not quite familiar with – but her eyes seemed eager to justify him; her faith was enough to bring her to her knees.

His was the beauty of angels, she believed; his was the beauty of the holy heavens above.

But then she remembered: that boy, that precious little boy had risen from the shadows and it was in that very same darkness, his most elemental host, where he belonged. That’s where his beauty truly belonged. That’s where it really resided.

He belonged in a vacuum so dark it was impossible to tell beauty from horror.

Perhaps, she finally admitted, there was no such dichotomy.

_You can’t really admire beauty when it’s hidden in the dark. _

Her neck was pale and slender, and her skin was much smoother than he had anticipated.

_The tiny lord has fangs, and tonight he is his own thirst. Tonight, he becomes his hunger. And the gravestones have never looked as monumental as they do tonight; the moon has never looked so magnificently out of reach, the night has never felt this everlasting and the trees, in the distance, have never looked so white. _

The first bite changed the meridians of his entire existence. It turned the girl into a prey; it turned him into a monster. Those fangs pierced through her skin like ruthless needles; he had never felt such hunger before, his consuming gaze was both frightened yet satisfied by the look of complete helplessness that took possession of the girl’s face. Why her? Why him? Why tonight, of all nights, when she was seeking a cure for her dying mother? As her blood became a monument in his throat, his senses all rose one by one – the first drop burned in his gums, baptizing his sacrosanct existence in the limbo that only exists between desire and profanity.

_His hands are cold, but cold itself is dead tonight. _

All the questions he had been meaning to ask his father suddenly found new shapes in the crimson rivers that streamed down the corners of his mouth – what is this hunger, and why does it define him tonight? What is this impulse, this drive, this thrill that summons a side of him that had remained dormant for so long?

He shall never know her name, or that she was supposed to turn fourteen the next summer, a couple of weeks after his own birthday. As her chest heaved in painful exclamation, his mouth began to erase each of the parts of her that made her who she was. He was young and inexperienced. Uncultured in the arts of the body.

_Too much and enough cannot be disassociated from one another. His galloping heart cannot abandon the intricate labyrinth of things he has yet to learn. He’s the king of his confusion. His knees tremble, his throat is constricted. _

As the girl’s lifeless body coalesced against his arms the boy finally understood the difference between enough and too much. His mother’s screams were not enough to help him out of the nightmare he himself had created. Lisa’s arms around his small frame felt like haunted houses. The tiny lord embraced his mother as his amber eyes begged her for forgiveness and the woman lowered her head, secluding the boy’s beauty in the most familiar of shadows.

“Was it the first time you…” she ventured the question but her words faded in the night. She was unable to voice the thought and provide her suspicions with a clear shape.

The tiny lord has fangs, but the tiny lord is her son.

The boy nodded his head once.

“Please don’t tell him,” he begged as he hid his face in the soft spot between his mother’s neck and shoulder. “Please don’t tell him.”

_The tiny lord has fangs. _

_The blood that pools around the corners of his mouth is a culture._

_And children are always told to not play with him._


End file.
